“I meant jes what I said, Ira Hasbrook,” said she.
“The kid’s all right,” said Ira. “He couldn’ hit nuthin further’n ten feet. But he’s all right jes the same. We’re goin’ ter miss him, huh, Auntie?”
But they did not miss him for long, for they were destined to see him again before the day was over.
CHAPTER IV
THE SUFFERER
In truth, if this were a narrative of Ira Hasbrook’s adventures, it might be thought lively reading of the dime novel variety. He had not, as he had confided to Westy, limited his killing exploits to swatting flies.
He was one of those universal characters who have a way of drifting finally to farms. And he had not abridged his tales of sprightly adventure in imparting them to Westy. He had been to sea on a New Bedford whaler. He had shot big game in the Rockies. He had lived on a ranch. His star performance had been a liberal participation in the kidnapping of a despotic king in a small South Sea island.
Naturally, so lively an adventurer had nothing but contempt for a pasteboard target. And though he did not wilfully undertake to alienate Westy from his code of conduct, he had so continually represented to him the thrilling glories of the chase, that Aunt Mira had very naturally suffered some haunting apprehensions that her nephew might depart impulsively on some piratical cruise or Indian killing enterprise.
These vague fears had simmered down at the last to the ludicrous dread that her departing nephew (whom she had come to know and love) might, under the inspiration of the satanic Ira, celebrate his departure from the country by laying low some innocent cow in attempting to “drop” an undesirable woodchuck. She had come to have a very horror of the word drop which occurred so frequently in Ira’s tales of adventure....
But Aunt Mira’s fears were needless. Westy had been Ira’s companion without being his disciple. In his quiet way he had understood Ira thoroughly, the same as in his quiet way he understood Roy Blakeley and Pee-wee Harris thoroughly. The cows, even the woodchucks, were safe. The shot which turned the tide of Westy Martin’s life was not out of his own precious rifle.
He had not taken many steps after hearing the shot when he came upon the effect of it. A small deer lay a few feet off the trail. The beautiful creature was quite motionless and though it lay prone on its side with the head flat upon the ground, its gracefulness was apparent, even striking. It lay in a sort of bower of low hanging foliage and had a certain harmony with the forest which even its stricken state and somewhat unnatural attitude could not destroy.